Edmond James de Rothschild

World Travel

In 1898 he commissioned naval architect George Lennox Watson of Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company to build the huge luxury steam yacht SY 'Atmah' (1665 tons) in which he and his sons used to tour the world until 1939.

Zionism

Although he remained separate from the Zionist movement, and "rejected institutional and ideological Zionism," The Baron Rothschild became an avid supporter of Jewish settlement in Palestine financing the site at Rishon LeZion. In his goal for the establishment of Palestine as a home for Jewish settlement, he promoted industrialization and economic development. In 1924, he established the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA), which acquired more than 125,000 acres (50,586 ha) of land and set up business ventures.

Edmond de Rothschild also played a pivotal role in establishing the Yishuv's wine industry. Under the supervision of his administrators in Ottoman Palestine, farm colonies and vineyards were established, and two major wineries were opened in Rishon LeZion and Zikhron Ya'akov. Rothschild funded a glass factory that would supply bottles for his wineries. Rothschild met Meir Dizengoff in Paris and chose Dizengoff to launch and manage the new factory, called Mizaga. Dizengoff opened the factory in Tantura in 1892 and managed the factory for approximately two years. Mizaga was the first Jewish-owned factory in Ottoman Palestine.

Rothschild also backed research in electricity by engineers and financed the development of an electric generating station.

According to historian Albert M. Hyamson, "Rothschild recognised that the overriding interest of Palestinian Jews was the confidence and the friendship of their Arab neighbours. The interests of the Arab cultivators of the land he bought were never overlooked, but by development he made this land capable of maintaining a population ten times its former size." While Edmond de Rothschild was not always supportive of an inclusive government—he suggested in 1931 to Judah Magnes that "We must hold them (the Arabs) down with a strong hand"—he acknowledged the importance of co-governance and peaceful coexistence in a 1934 letter to the League of Nations, stating that "the struggle to put an end to the Wandering Jew, could not have as its result, the creation of the Wandering Arab."